


Somehow he knew a Skywalker was to blame for this

by CharlotteDaBookworm



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Ben is completely done with this shit, Fix-It, Gen, Poor Obi-Wan, Sass, Sporadic Updates, Taking flamethrower's Re-Entry as canon, The Jedi ain't gon know what hit em, Time Travel, alright, and the Sith can go fuck themselves, he died and he's still picking up after those bloody Skywalkers, he old and tired and just done, probably, retirement is sounding awesome right now, they go a bit crazy, they may have already been a bit crazy, this is what happens when you leave a bloke in the desert for 20 years, who cares what the council thinks
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-08
Updated: 2017-10-24
Packaged: 2018-12-12 21:10:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11745261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CharlotteDaBookworm/pseuds/CharlotteDaBookworm
Summary: Ben Kenobi woke up.





	1. Ben Kenobi Wakes Up

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Waking Dream](https://archiveofourown.org/works/238162) by [flamethrower](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flamethrower/pseuds/flamethrower). 
  * Inspired by [The Dark Path Lit by Sun and Stars](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8314027) by [A_Delicate_Fury](https://archiveofourown.org/users/A_Delicate_Fury/pseuds/A_Delicate_Fury). 
  * Inspired by [Course Correction](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8339320) by [FreakishLemon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FreakishLemon/pseuds/FreakishLemon). 
  * Inspired by [New Meetings](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5437004) by [teacup_of_doom](https://archiveofourown.org/users/teacup_of_doom/pseuds/teacup_of_doom). 



> Inspired by a complete shittonne of people. Always meant to write a time travel fic, guess this is it. I'm taking Flamethrower's Re-Entry as canon (specifically other-when) cause I still ain 't seen the films. Updates will be sporadic - bit stuck at the moment, no inspiration.

Ben Kenobi wakes up.

 

He doesn't expect to. Not really. When one is a part of the Force they do not sleep - at least, not as the living would describe it. You could rest in an almost-meditative state _(drifting amongst the currents of the Force, focusing on nothing)_ but not truly sleep. Ben hadn't slept since before his confrontation with Vader _ **(not Anakin. Never Anakin. Not the boy who he had raised and loved, not truly)**_ on the Death Star _(decades ago and moments ago from his point of view. The Force is timeless, everything happens at once and not)._ Hadn't slept restfully in even longer - since Order 66 and the Fall of the Jedi at least, possibly since the start of the Clone Wars, maybe even since the death of his Master.

 

Either way, Ben Kenobi _(Crazy Old Wizard, Exile, War Veteran, High General, Jedi Master, High Council Member, Teacher, Force Ghost)_ did not expect to wake up, feeling fully rested.

 

He certainly didn't expect to wake up - for all intents and purposes alive - on the floor in the Chamber of the Jedi High Council with his Master staring down at him with worry pulsing from an impossible bond.

 

Old Ben Kenobi definitely hadn't expected waking up 19 years old.

 

**Somehow he knew a _Skywalker_ was to blame for this.**


	2. The room was whirling. How lovely.

Old Ben Kenobi wakes up.

 

He does so with the grace of a hardened warrior _(with the grace of an old man who has spent so long fighting and surviving he has no idea how **not to** anymore)_ \- instinctively reaching out with his senses and the Force, determining his surroundings and masking his Force Signature before he had even opened his eyes.

 

For those who believe in it, trust in it and listen to it the Force can and will be their most valuable ally. Ben had rarely ever doubted in the Force, he had learned over the course of his childhood that when you trust in the Force things will work out even if not in the way that you expected or wanted, but there had been a few times - mostly after Order 66. Unsurprisingly, feeling the deaths _(hearing the screams of pain and denial and confusion)_ of tens of thousands of Jedi _(brothers and sisters and friends and rivals and family. Younglings and Initiates and Padawans and Knights and Masters. All of them **gone;** one by one, their screams adding to the cacophony of echos inside of his head)_ all at once can rather strain ones faith in the Force. Then again, Ben hadn't exactly trusted much of anything, especially himself, after 66 _(after **Anakin** )._

 

Still, Ben Kenobi is a Jedi Master - one renowned for being one of the best - and though his faith in the Force had been shaken over the years, it had never wavered.

 

That did not make what the Force was telling him any more believable.

 

It takes several seconds to process what the Force is telling him but when he finally does Ben's breath hitches and his eyes fly open, attempting to focus on the blurry but unmistakable figure nearest to him.

 

"Obi-Wan? Padawan?"

 

This wasn't possible. It couldn't be. Ben was dead, so was Qui-Gon and the Council and all but a handful of other Jedi. He wasn't alive and his Master wasn't staring down at him worriedly. The training bond wasn't singing in the back of his mind. The council wasn't around them, the temple wasn't alive with the presence of thousands of Force sensitives. This _wasn't **possible**_.

 

No matter what the Force told him.

 

Any second now Ben was going to snap back to reality where he was part of the Force and having a psychotic break.

 

_Sithspit._

 

General Kenobi had never quite mastered the art of self-delusion.

 

"Master." Ben's voice was steady and his tone revealed none of his inner turmoil, though he would never be able to say exactly how he had managed it. Crazy-old-Ben-Kenobi stumbled as he stood up, grasping the hand that Qui-Gon offered in order to steady himself and stop from falling back onto the cool marble floor.

 

The room was whirling. How lovely.

 

"Padawan? What happened? Obi-wan?"

 

_**Kriff**_. Ben didn't remember the temple being this _loud_ when he was younger.

 

"Call me Ben. Please." He closed his eyes against his steadily developing headache. "I have not been Obi-wan Kenobi in a very long time." His voice was soft, his coruscanti accent faded but regaining strength with every word he spoke - nostalgia and his surroundings triggering the rather distinctive accent for the first time since the fall of the Republic.

 

For a moment Ben breathed. Just existing in the Force, pushing all of his worries and questions away. He was alive and breathing and nineteen. _(He was alive and breaking and twenty-one. He was alive and burning and thirty-four. He was broken and surviving and thirty-five-forty-fifty. He was dying but hopeful and fifty-five. He was dead and content and sixty. He was alive and breathing and nineteen.)_ The moment passed and Ben opened his eyes - taking in the room around him. Raising a hand to his mouth, he swallowed back bile as his memories assaulted him.

 

_(Memories of the silence of a tomb. Of the stickiness of drying blood on the floor. Of the scents of cordite and plasma and smoke and burnt flesh in the air. Of the tiny bodies, **younglings** , that had fallen in a place that should have been safe by the hands of a man who should of protected them. Of why?! Why Anakin?!! They were just children! How could you do this? "He is like my brother, I cannot kill him.")_

 

_(Memories of Mustafar. "You underestimate my power." "Don't try it." Anakin leaps, eyes glinting with insanity, and Obi-wan (not Ben, not yet) reacts - lightsaber flashing. "You were the chosen one! It was said that you would destroy the Sith. Not join them! Bring balance to the Force, not leave it in darkness!" "I **hate you**!" "You were my brother Anakin, **I loved you**." Ben (never Obi-wan, never again. Obi-wan Kenobi died with his padawan.) walked away, broken and cold and tired and grieving and--)_

 

"-awan! Padawan Kenobi?!"

 

Ben ripped his mind from the memories that crowded his vision, hiding them behind durasteel shields that he'd developed over the course of an intergalactic war and a long exile, snapping back into focus. Mace Windu's scowl had darkened.

 

"Apologies Masters, I-" the physically-young-mentally-old Kenobi grimaced, scrubbing a hand over his face and trying to banish the memories back to the back of his mind. His headache was getting worse. "Could you repeat that please?"

 

"What happened Padawan? A vision?"

 

**Kriffing hells**. He was a padawan. Ben hadn't been a padawan since - well, since the first time he was 21. He'd spent more time _training_ a padawan than he had as a padawan. _(Even considering how that had turned out.)_

 

"No."

  
  
An eyebrow _( of doom, Garen used to always say. When you got the eyebrow you knew you were in deep shit.)_ was raised. "No, padawan?"

  
  
"I may not know precisely what happened, but it wasn't a vision. I'm certain of that."

 

He could feel the Masters exchanging looks at the sheer conviction in his voice.

  
  
"Oh? And you have had enough experience to be certain of this Padawan?"

  
  
_(Ben remembered the prescience cycles he'd had as a teen - years of waking to flashes of red and black, to millions of dying screams, to iron in his throat and ash in his nose and pain in his heart. He remembered coaching Anakin through his own visions - how his padawan had had so many true-seeing visions that the council had refused to acknowledge. He remembered looking at Anakin and feeling dread in his soul and ice in his heart. He remembered Mortis and training with Yoda in order to see Force Ghosts. He remembered his years on Tattooine - seeing planets burning and family falling and children screaming during his meditation. How he had woken up and known that he would die that day. He remembered **the Force**._

_Ben remembered. He knew visions. He knew them like he knew the names of every Jedi that died when Order 66 was released, like he knew the names of every person he'd lost (and that was the longest list of all), of every member of the 212th. And what had happened to him? Wasn't a vision. The Force told him that what he saw now was real - the bond and the temple certainly helped to confirm that. But his memories were real as well - they were too complete to have merely been an extremely vivid vision: he could recall a thousand mundane days of exile, he knew forms that this body had never learnt, his shield were completely different to how they were structured as a teen, and fuck but he remembered **dying**. It wasn't a vision._

_Ben had lived (for a given word at the end) every one of those years, he was sure of that.)_

  
  
"Yes Master. I have."

 


	3. Mace Windu was... Confused

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Something was different.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't own Star wars.

Mace Windu was... Confused.

 

While this wasn't a particularly uncommon experience when dealing with Master Qui-Gon Jinn and his young Padawan (especially during a debriefing), this time was different.

 

Something was different.

 

Jinn & Kenobi had been giving their reports on the current situation of the minor trade dispute on Abhean - a Mid-rim planet where nothing had, surprisingly, blown up (which was quite frankly a minor miracle when it came to that pair) - when Kenobi had just dropped, mid word. Qui-Gon had barely managed to catch him before he hit the floor of the council chamber.

 

There was no warning from the Force. No swaying or obvious injuries or overwhelming exhaustion. No real reason. He just. Dropped.

 

And the Force **_sang_**.

 

Mace was a Master of the Jedi Order, a member of the High Council, Head of the Order. He came from a species renowned for their connection to the Force. He'd trained padawans to knighthood, had invented his own 'saber style, and had been able to see shatterpoints since he was just a youngling. Yet he had _never_ felt the Force sing like that.

 

**_(hope-change-love-life-mentor-future-saviour-chosen-childe-teacher-guardian-warrior-protector)_ **

 

And, judging by the surprise that he sensed in the Force, neither had any of his fellow Masters - between them they had centuries of experience and training in the Force and yet not one of them had any idea what had happened. (Master Yoda himself was over 800 years old but by the surprise on his face he obviously knew of nothing like this incident.) Only that there was nothing that they could do.

 

The 19 year old Padawan (having been laid on the floor after his master had caught him) was completely unresponsive. Nothing could wake him, no one could reach him - even the medic called couldn't _do_ anything, didn't _know_ anything. Just that there was no reason for it. No reason for him to fall, no reason that they couldn't wake him. There was certainly no reason for Kenobi's Force signature to practically disappear.

 

(Which, for such a shining light to seemingly disappear without warning or reason, was extremely disconcerting.)

 

However as suddenly as his Force signature disappeared, it reappeared - stronger, the same but fundamentally different. (Before, Mace would have likened Kenobi's Force signature to a flame: bright and strong, but young and uncontrolled - prone to flaring and dimming with his emotions but extremely difficult to douse entirely, always shifting and changing but with a sharp burn if tested. But, while this new signature was similar it was also greatly contrasting. It was still fire, but banked embers instead of an open flame - controlled and harmless to look at but hiding an impossible strength underneath: sharper and wiser, the type of wisdom only gained with age and experience, but also warmer. More welcoming with hints of hidden danger and an occasional temper. The two were like night and day but where still undeniably, irrevocably, Obi-Wan Kenobi.)

 

Which was a large part of why Mace was so confused.

 

Because Force signatures didn't just change, not instantly. It didn't work that way. It took years, decades sometimes, for even the slightest of changes to a person's Force signature - which was most often just a sense of refinement and control. A person's signature could grow _stronger_ as their connection to the Force grew stronger but it didn't _change_. For a change that drastic, it would take a lifetime of redefining events and near-death experiences, you would have to break and be put back together. (Most Jedi _died_ without their Force signatures changing that much.) And it had happened to Padawan Kenobi in a matter of moments. Which was impossible. (In the Force, possible all things are.)

 

And the man who woke up...

 

Obi-Wan Kenobi had potential - he was young, still prone to recklessness and occasional fits of temper (though nowhere near as much as he had when he was younger), he still had problems with his own self-worth, clung a bit too much to rules at times, and often focused more on the future than the present (which was likely due to strong skill in prescience). But he shone in the Force, was greatly skilled with a lightsaber, and was developing a undeniable skill in negotiation alongside a silver tongue. One day soon he would make an exceptional Jedi Knight. (That much was obvious even as a child.) With the potential to become a great Master of the Order in the future, even if he still had much to learn. Yet Obi-Wan still needed years of experience and study and wisdom to reach that point. (Almost ready to take his trials or not.)

 

The man (not a boy) who woke was that potential realised. His shields, brought up almost automatically, where stronger than Mace's own (layer over layer over layer, twisting and turning and hiding everything of any importance) but from what little Mace could sense Kenobi felt like a Jedi Master. (He certainly had the shields of one.) One with decades of experience, who had taught and listened and learnt from the Force. He felt refined and contained and strong in the Force in a way that only the strongest of Masters were. (He felt _broken_ and _old_ and _tired._ It was faint but there, like it was in almost all of the old veterans in the Order. A reminder of harsher times.)

 

He held himself differently - his body language changed, relaxed and alert (like a warrior before a battle) instead of the nervous seriousness of before - his weight centred strangely, more like a Soresu practitioner than the Ataru that Mace knew he was trained in and favoured. His voice, when he spoke, was softer than before but with an undercurrent of steel that said that the speaker was used to being listened too, his accent faded like he'd spent a significant time away from Coruscant.

 

This man was a practical nexus of shatterpoints - so many focused on his choices and the choices of those around him that it almost hurt to look at him. Kenobi had always had shatterpoints focused on him - more so as he had aged - but that wasn't even a quarter of what was now focused on him. It was unnerving, shatterpoints didn't develop in such a great number so suddenly. It was as though he'd just changed every choice he would have made and almost everything hinged on what he chose to do now.

 

The man who woke was unquestionably not a Padawan.

 

_Everything_ in Mace screamed that the man, the 19 year old, standing in front of him wasn't a Padawan - wasn't the boy who his friend had taken as a Padawan. Yet, the Force told him that this was Obi-Wan Kenobi - the same boy who left the Order on Melida/Dann, who was utterly devoted to his Master (even past the point that the Old Man deserved it at times.) Changed, but still him.

 

So, Mace Windu was confused.

 

(And slightly lost. Thankfully, for his pride at least, everyone else bar Kenobi seemed to be just as bad off as he was.)

 

Which wasn't at all helped by what Kenobi _said_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So. New chapter before I go off to Uni (Cardiff here I come). I'm not quite sure if I got Mace's voice down properly but it's just been sitting here so whatever. Hope y'all like it.
> 
> I can't believe that amount of people who like this fic - it's amazing. Thanks to everyone who commented, subscribed or left kudos. This is my first proper multi-chapter fic so I'm sooo glad that people like it.
> 
> Thanks for reading, CharlotteDaBookworm.


	4. Ben missed Tatooine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Feeling the agitation in the room rise again, Ben sighed. _Jedi Masters – renowned across the galaxy for their patience_

Ben missed Tatooine

 

Maybe it was strange, to miss the place that symbolised his figurative imprisonment - to miss the loneliness and the pain and the sand. But he did. He missed the endless beauty of the night sky. He missed the awe-inspiring wild power of the sporadic storms. He missed the warmth of twin suns on his old bones and the harsh quiet peace of the empty dunes and the single bright shining light of the boy who should have been his nephew.

 

But, most of all, he missed the fact that on Tatooine he could just walk out of his door and scream and rage and grieve and cry as much as he wanted _(needed)_. Nobody to hear, nobody to look at him as if he was completely insane, nobody to care even if he actually was (everyone on Tatooine thought he was crazy anyway.) Just Ben and the sand and the Force and his memories and his guilt - it was cathartic.

 

(Ben had lived a lifetime in those dunes. He'd learned things there that he would've never imagined possible, had found a family amongst the Bantha herds and the Tusken Clans. It was where he'd picked up the broken pieces of his life and soul and patched them back together, where he'd learnt to carve and heal. Tatooine had taught him more control than a decade under his master, a decade teaching a genius Padawan and a galaxy-wide war ever had. Over time, Tatooine had taught him how to live again - even if it was just for the sake of the 2 children he'd held mere seconds after they were born.)

 

Right now, turning slowly to take in a Council line up that he hadn't seen in decades, Ben would _really_ like to be able to walk out of the door and just... Scream.

 

Because Ben knew how each of these beings (these controlled luminous beings in the Force) had died.

 

_(Yarael Poof had died on an average mission years before the First Battle of Genosis. Even Piell and Adi Gallia had both died in skirmishes during the Clone Wars. Yaddle had died when Vader and the 501st had marched on the temple - she'd retired after Naboo to work in the archives. Eeth Koth and Oppo Rancisis had both retired from the Council but remained active field Jedi - they'd also died when the Temple was stormed, protecting those that they could. Plo Koon, Ki-Adi Mundi, and Depa Billaba were all killed when Order 66 was issued - betrayed by their own troops. According to what Ben could hack from the Senate surveillance footage, Mace & Saesae Tinn had both died while attempting to arrest Sidious - though Mace had survived for several more years before rumours told that he was killed by Vader himself. Illness had taken Master Yoda - weakened as he was by the Fall of the Jedi, his battle with Sidious and years of exile without any medical care.)_

 

_(Qui-Gon Jinn had died on Naboo - in the bowels of the Palace in Theed - victim to the first Sith the Order had seen in millennia and his own_ fucking pride _.)_

 

And, _fuck_ , that hurt. 13 revered Jedi Masters in the room, some of the Orders best, and Ben had outlived all but one of them - and even Yoda _(Yoda!)_ had only outlasted him by mere months. Ben had died before he'd turned 60 - human Force users could easily live twice that even without medical interference - and yet he'd managed to survive where so many hadn't. Where so many should have.

 

So yeah. Ben wanted to scream.

 

He wanted to cry and rage and grieve. He wanted to curse and yell and _break_ because this...

 

This was cruel.

 

( **They didn't even** ** _ask_**.)

 

How was he supposed to explain what had happened? Fuck, but he didn't even know the sith-damned date. And there was no chance that people hadn't noticed how different he was already, he couldn't act as the person (child) that he used to be _(he couldn't)_ but hell Ben didn't even know how this had happened.

 

Well.

 

He had his theories. One didn't travel in time _accidentally_ after all (well unless ones' name happens to be Skywalker) and if a Skywalker wasn't to blame for this then he'd eat his favourite pair of boots.

 

(And how was it that Ben was still picking up after them when he was kriffing _dead_ for Force's sake!)

 

Coming to a stop, having completed his slow turn, he focused his eyes of Master Yoda. Who looked so much **younger** then Ben remembered. (They all looked so much younger - Mace, Plo, Yoda, Depa. Had he ever seen them this young? He must have. Yet he couldn't recall it. Most of the people in this room would be dead in less than 2 decades, all of them - himself included - within 4. How had they all aged so much in so little time? Ben was sure that he wouldn't recognise himself if he looked in a mirror.)

 

Feeling the agitation in the room rise again, Ben sighed. _Jedi Masters - renowned across the galaxy for their patience._ "My apologies Masters, it has been a very long time since I was last in this room."

 

Yarael Poof scowled. "You were in this room less than 3 weeks ago with your Master, Padawan."

 

"Hmmm. 3 weeks you say?"

 

Master Yoda perked up, eyes focusing and ears rising. "Been longer for you then, it has?"

 

"Perhaps." Ben smiled. He'd missed the old troll, he saw so much more at times - never one to care about whether something was possible. "It certainly feels that way." From a certain point of view, it _was_ that way. It'd been decades since he'd last seen this room in person (nightmares and visions were a different story). Honestly, he would have been happier to have never seen it again.

 

Ben kept his eyes focused on the people, fairly sure of what would happen if he looked elsewhere in the mental state he was in at the moment, until a nasty flash of memory when he met Depa's eyes _(Yellow eyes, ally turned enemy, a seat he hadn't wanted, a friend almost lost)_ caused his eyes to drift away automatically. He made the mistake of glancing down at the floor.

 

Durasteel shields rippled.

 

**_*_ **

 

**_"Not even the younglings survived."_ **

 

**_Darkness. That was all that could be felt. The temple was steeped in Darkness. (how? This was their home! A beacon of the Light? Who could have done this? Why would they do this?)_ **

 

**_"Killed not by clones, this Padawan, but by a lightsaber he was."_ **

 

**_He was choking on the scent of burnt flesh and hair and clothes, on the metallic taste of blood at the back of his throat, on the screams echoing in his skull. So much pain and betrayal and fear and grief in the Force it was almost palpable - blanketing the area and almost screaming out at him, even non-sensitives would be able to sense this. His eyes burnt with held back tears._ **

 

**_The Council Chamber, a room which he had spent so much time in over the years - first as a Padawan at his Master's side, then as a Knight with a young Padawan of his own, then as a Master and a General and a Council Member in his own right - was thick with death and darkness._ **

 

**_They knelt in front of the body of a youngling (not even an initiate - who would kill mere babes like this), the temple silent in a way that he had never heard before even at the height of the war. Empty of life and hope. The children had obviously hidden in the safest place that they could think of. (The temple was supposed to be_ ** **_safe!_ ** **_) It hadn't helped them._ **

 

**_"Who could have done this?"_ **

 

**_He thought he knew. He had a bad feeling about this. But it couldn't have been. He couldn't - wouldn't - do something like this. Please don't let it be what he thought. Please._ **

 

**_(But his force-damned prescience said it was true)_ **

 

**_*_ **

 

"What the Force was that Padawan?"

 

Horror was thick in the room, in the Force. No one wanted to believe what they'd seen - they had all recognised the room ( _this_ room) and the sight of youngling's dead by lightsaber wounds in what should be a sanctuary horrified them all.

 

"A possibility Masters." Ben's smile was bitter and tired. "Tell me, what do you know of Temporal Physics?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Have some more angst. From Bens POV again so probably a bit confusing. He's still totally lost - it's only been 5-10mins for him soo. Next chapter from Qui-Gon's POV - so more angst but different direction. Also, I'm crap at writing conversations so that's irritating - this has been mostly done for more than a week but for that. I hope y'all like it.
> 
> Gonna try to get at least one chapter out each month - I've got two essays due in a couple weeks tho so no promises.
> 
> Thanks for reading,  
> CharlotteDaBookworm

**Author's Note:**

> Anyone who guesses which Skywalker it was gets virtual cookies. If you guys wanna see anything specific happening tell me and I'll try to write it in. Force knows it might help for my inspiration.
> 
> Thanks for reading,  
> CharlotteDaBookworm


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